


Memories for the Future [Mindlessly Indulgent Mix]

by Starcrossedsky



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Afterlife fic, Anal Sex, M/M, PWP, trans!Ardyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 08:57:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: After everything, Ardyn's the last place Noctis ever thought would feel like coming home.or: nai writes something shamelessly self-indulgent and if you don't like it you can meet him in the pit





	Memories for the Future [Mindlessly Indulgent Mix]

**Author's Note:**

> [lean on me voice] Some... Times in our lives... We get annoyed... With others' trans fics...
> 
> anyway yeah so I got annoyed that there was not ever a single trans smut fic that was actually true to my experience, as a trans dude, so I said fuck it and wrote one. Because the amount of trans fic where the couple winds up having P-in-V sex in an incredibly vanilla way, disregarding entirely that that can be a dysphoria trigger as all get out... annoys me! it's not even my dysphoria trigger and it annoys me!
> 
> So here's this.
> 
> Also as implied by the scene setting there might... end up being more in this continuity... it might even Grow a Plot... but don't count on it. sometimes you just want your faves to bang in a cabin in the woods. It's Not That Deep.
> 
> (Similarly please bear with my historical fashion Artistic Liberties. Again, It's Not That Deep.)

There is the beyond, and then there is the after, and when you wake in the after it is as lonely as Angelgard and about as friendly. You know there are monsters in the night before anyone tells you, know it like you know the magic that still burns in your blood - 

And it does burn, now, a glow of Armiger blue instead of red the first time you scratch yourself, and it's almost no surprise, the first time you come to a town that doesn't let anyone stay after sunset unless they prick their fingers to prove they have no magic in them. You move on, and you keep moving, and everywhere it is the same story - 

Magic makes people into monsters. Or at least that's what people think. Your only source of good fortune is that as hungry as you get between towns, as tired and thirsty, the dead don't actually have need of anything. It's all old signals rooted in your brain.

(Once, you think you see a woman in a Glaive uniform in the dark, fighting back the monsters, but when you call out, there's no response.)

It's at the sixth town you come to - with a market only for outsiders, separate from the rest of the town by walls - that you first hear about the practice of witches. Just outside town, close enough to come trade and not have to wander, in exchange for protecting the place.

It's a crap deal, but it's better than wandering forevermore, or whatever. You resolve to go talk to the witch outside town here - surely they'd be more amicable to your questions. Maybe you can even rest somewhere warm for a while, instead of in the cold, damp nights that remind you of Duscae and rainy camping, the time one of the tent poles collapsed and poured water all over you and Prompto.

The witch's house, such as it is, is hidden behind ruins that remind you of the Fallgrove, and you find it more by the neatly organized, young garden patches than you do by the sight of the house itself. The lit window is hidden by a tree, and the whole thing blends in very carefully.

The door has markings on it that remind you of a haven, though they glow in shifting gold instead of blue. Taking that as a good sign, you knock.

"Just a moment!" calls a voice that makes your stomach drop out through your feet. Before you can entirely process the idea that perhaps you should turn this into some kind of ding dong ditch and cut your losses, Ardyn opens the door.

The way he freezes, he's as shocked by this development as you are. There's a tingle in the air, magic like he's expecting you to attack, a flash of a Royal Arm just out of sight beyond the door -

But you don't do anything except take him in, how he looks with his big coat and scarf removed, and eventually the silence breaks as he sighs and steps away from the door to let you past.

"Very well," he says. "You may as well come in."

"Thanks," you say, and duck around him. The house is... warm, compared to the outside, and remarkably clean and free of clutter, not at all what you'd have expected. (Then again, the realization that you could placate Ignis by keeping your clutter in your Armiger was life-changing, and Ardyn's had his a lot longer than you.)

There's two chairs in front of the fire, and while neither looks exactly comfortable, there's a mug of something steaming on the table next to one of them and a familiar scarf thrown over the back, so you sit in the other. It's nice to get off your feet.

Ardyn, with his typical casually sweeping gestures, closes the door behind you and comes back to the other seat, cupping his hands around his hot mug of whatever. It might be tea, from the way he inhales the steam. He's as hard to get a read on as ever, but you think he might be nervous.

"I didn't expect to find you here," you offer, because it's true. "I wasn't looking for you."

"I can't imagine you would have any reason to," he agrees, staring into the mug. "I would have expected you to leave the moment you heard my voice."

"Yeah, well..." You inhale. "It's settled, isn't it? It's not really fair to hold a grudge after you kill somebody."

Ardyn chuckles, his eyes on his drink. "Last pays for all, is it? Not that I'll object to a blank slate, but that does raise the question of why you did come."

"Heard the town here had a 'witch' they weren't running off at night," you say. "Wanted to pick their brains, maybe sleep somewhere warm for once."

And now Ardyn's yellow eyes are on you, as he taps his fingers against the side of his mug. "Stay as long as you like," he says after a moment, and there's a trace of a smile on his face. "Assuming, of course, that you can stand the company."

"Think I'll manage somehow," you reply, and that's all it takes.

\----

Ardyn is, if anything, even more magically touched than you, which shouldn't be as surprising as it is. He's still unfathomably old, and his body bears the marks of his time as a vessel for the Scourge even if the disease itself is gone. 

(And he assures you it is, though the casual way he intermixes magic of darkness and light, for a while, puts you on edge. It takes you realizing how much looser he is, that his laugh doesn't have knives embedded in it, that the ocean of anger like pus below the surface has drained away, for you to believe it. His blood is deep black with shifting glitters of pink the time you see him bleed, cutting his hand on a sharp stone as he minds his gardens.)

The monsters that harried you between other towns don't approach here, for the most part. Instead you deal with flocks of tiny birds that are constantly attracted to Ardyn, black wisps of shadow with eyes, which flinch back from you but happily chitter and nest in Ardyn's hair and scarves.

You barely ever see him eat or sleep, which leaves you the big bed upstairs, and that's fine. The house is strange, half witch's cottage and half workshop lab, with chemical smells constant in that part of the house. But it's comfortable enough that your night stretches into a week, and then more, and you fall into a routine.

A routine that involves a non-zero amount of fighting, admittedly. After the first awkward day, Ardyn has no trouble needling you, though not in the painful ways he once did. There's just a familiarity to it, and you needle back and end up smiling half the time afterwards instead of really annoyed. And of course, there's the sparring.

The sparring really proves that Ardyn wanted to lose in Insomnia that night, because you wind up flat on your ass in the face of his superior arsenal (where did he even get that scythe) more often than not. And it's after the one of those, a sword in the dirt next to your head and Ardyn's body over yours, so much and so little like that night -

You aren't sure how your hand gets into his hair, but he doesn't object when you pull him down to kiss him hot and breathless. It's something you do without thinking, because it's been - 

(ten years in the crystal and more. Since before Altissia, that you and the guys ended a training session by tumbling into the tent with kisses and fingers. Another part of the trip that you didn't realize was important until it was gone.)

The thing about being in the afterlife, whatever else can be said about it, is that you don't feel the need to breathe until you think about it. Ardyn kisses you, eagerly, on the dirt outside the house, for a long, long time.

And maybe it's a mistake, but you're disappointed when he pulls away. He's flushed and his hair falls in his face, damp with sweat, and he looks more human than he ever has. Maybe it's a mistake, to throw yourself at the first person you've met in the after who has any kind of understanding of who you are, what your life has been, but all it takes is wondering how long it's been for him and you know that you're willing to go as far as he might be.

(Sex isn't _just_ for the love of your life, but that doesn't mean it means nothing. Those times fooling around in a tent meant something, and so does this. You just don't know what, yet.)

Ardyn hangs over you after the kiss breaks, his pupils attractively wide, his face just a little flushed. "...Inside, then?" he offers.

"Yeah," you agree immediately, in a breathless little sound, and you let him help pull you to your feet. You don't let go of his hand, and there's a sort of quiet nervousness to both of you as he pulls you up the stairs. It's weird seeing Ardyn without the layer of confidence that he always has - had, you have to correct yourself, because the Ardyn without the Scourge is not at all the same person as the Ardyn you knew on Eos.

He leans against the bed and pulls you up against him, and you lean up into the kiss. It's softer, warmer, than down in the garden, but then the spark catches again as he runs a hand over your hip. He makes a pleased sound, and when that kiss breaks apart it's with him nipping at your lip and you pushing his collar aside to expose his neck.

You slide a leg between his, gently pushing both of your weight back onto the bed, and that makes him pause, just briefly, before he lets you apply pressure and grinds into it a bit. You kiss his neck, give it a firm suck - you want to make him _gasp_ , but it takes bringing your teeth into it before he does so, shivering and his grasp on your hip loosening. You're already starting to get hard, but he doesn't seem to be.

Still, in every other way he seems interested and delighted, so you keep going. He nips at your jawline, you slide a hand up the bottom of his shirt - and there you pause, encountering more fabric underneath.

"What?" he says a little breathlessly, pulling away to look at you directly.

You shake your head a little as you push him back. "Going to help me get this off?"

He pauses again, with that slight edge. "Alright," he says. "But don't be surprised. What's underneath doesn't always match what you expect."

It's cryptic noise, at first, and then you're unbuttoning his shirt and he's tugging at your belt and not much else matters. What you originally thought was an undershirt turns out to be some kind of - it's not a corset, _quite_ , but it's close enough, and there's another layer of shirt between it and the skin.

This time, you have to laugh. "I should've expected your underwear to have as many layers as everything else."

"Stays were high fashion, once," he mutters, all mock-offense, and you start carefully undoing the clasps at the front. "Trim waistlines for men and women both."

"Sure," you say, grinning. "Wearing garters under there too?"

"Why don't you _find out_ ," he says, eyes glittering with a challenge, and he pulls you down into another kiss before you're halfway up his chest. The fabric underneath _finally_ seems to be against his skin, from the faint dampness of sweat you can see in the cotton.

Ardyn's hiked your shirt most of the way up in the process of kissing you, so you give in and break long enough to slide it up and all the way off. Then you get back to getting the rest of the front closure undone, and when you do, Ardyn draws in a ragged breath at the release that sends another wave of heat down your spine.

You grind against him again, pushing the both of you down until his back is against the bed, and he rolls his hips against yours. There's still nothing else there, no new pressure or hardness, and the thought interlaces with his words from before and fits together in your head.

"Oh," you say, and then you kiss him, hard, and this time it's a reassurance, even as you gently pull the sides of the stays away from his chest and feel the way his chest bulges, too soft to be muscle, under your hands. Small breasts, but of course, with that body type what else would there be? Even as you're stripping him, it just becomes more and more obvious that Ardyn hasn't got an ounce of fat anywhere else.

"Yes, oh," he mutters, a bit sarcastically. One of his hands comes up to swat at yours gently. "Rather hard to get those removed when your body is static and regenerating."

"Yeah, I bet," you say, taking the hint and moving your hands back down towards his hips to pull the last undershirt up and finally, _finally_ get to see the skin underneath. It's pale and you can feel the jagged scar that crawls over Ardyn's hip around to his back, and carefully slide your hand away from that, too. "Is now a bad time to say that I never really got beyond hands with the guys? I have no idea what I'm doing."

"I have some relevant experience," Ardyn replies. "I'm sure we can manage."

You nod and let your hands wander lower, cupping his ass and squeezing a little. It gets you a pleased hum as he leans up to kiss your neck, and you give a harder squeeze when he starts to make progress on leaving you a hickey. You bring your hands back up and slide them under his waistband, carefully, and there's the strap of a packer harness over his hips, riding up over the band of his underwear.

"Can I - " you start, only to be interrupted.

"Noctis, if I wanted you to stop at any point in this I am wholly capable of doing so. If you stop working on my pants I'm most sincerely tempted to rip yours."

"All you had to do was ask," you mutter, but you undo another pair of buttons and push pants and underwear both down over his hips. Ardyn does his best to lift them up, but you can tell it's difficult with whatever exactly is wrong with his hip under the scar, so you kiss the side of his neck. "Don't worry, I've got it."

"Appreciated," he says, and it takes a little more less than comfortable wiggling before you're down to just that harness, a couple of black straps over his hips in clean lines. "I've got this, take care of yours."

"Gladly," you say, and drop your hands down to take care of your own waistband, sliding off him long enough for you both to kick free and down to nothing. (Well. Almost nothing. Ardyn is still in a pair of dress socks that go almost to his knees, and you're a bit disappointed that there _aren't_ garters.)

You drop down into the bed with him again, a long kiss that brings your bodies together. He's warm enough to make the rest of the room cold, though that's not the only reason you shiver against him. Ardyn runs a hand down your back, stopping where he feels the scar, and you can feel the hesitation there - 

"It's alright," you say, breaking the kiss to smile at him. "It mostly hurts if I work it too much, not from someone touching it."

A nod, and you're pulled down, and even just grinding like this is pretty good, something you could get used to. Ardyn's gasping less with the restriction on his chest gone, but he's growing confident again, nipping at your neck and drawing groans out of you. It's that as much as anything that warms you on the inside, because this isn't an arena where you would have expected Ardyn of all people to be vulnerable.

He's trusting you in his backwards way, and all you can do is answer it to the best of your ability. "How do you want this?" you say against his neck, as you tangle your fingers just a bit in his hair to tilt his head back.

The response you get is a groan first. "Same as any other man," Ardyn says in nearly a whisper, straining just a bit against your hold. "I can prep myself if you're concerned."

"That... might be for the best," you say. And you're aware suddenly of how your cheeks grow pink at the thought, the way the flush cascades down to your groin. Might as well be honest. "Also, it sounds hot."

Ardyn laughs again and rolls just a little, moving your weight off his body. You go with the roll, spreading out on your side as he summons first a towel (slid between his ass and the bedding) and then a bottle of oil out of his Armiger. The bottle is antique-looking and smells faintly of herbs - old-fashioned like everything else. Ardyn smirks at you and makes a show of rolling the oil between his long fingers before reaching down between his legs.

You shiver and twist to watch, even though you can't see much more than the general motion of Ardyn's hand, everything past his wrist hidden by the way he reaches around the rest of his body. You can still see the way his hips try to twitch, hear the sliding in and out... See the way he throws his head back, not quite reaching the pillows, and it's infinitely better than any snapshot but you still wish you could take one, just like this. You don't even have to touch yourself to stay hard, though you go for a few lazy strokes just because what else are you supposed to do?

The thought of those fingers in _you_ makes you groan and press your face into his shoulder. Ardyn just chuckles, a bit breathlessly, and with his free hand nudges the bottle of oil into your arm. "Here."

"Thanks," you say, taking it and pouring some out onto your fingers - it's thinner than you expected, which is probably why there's a towel there, and you wind up getting a bit more than you planned. Oh well, nothing else for it but to slick yourself up. It's okay against your hands, but wet and a little cold against your dick, so you stroke yourself a few more times while you wait for Ardyn to be ready.

And whether it's experience or eagerness, it doesn't take long before he's reaching over for you, pulling your hand at the wrist. "Come," and with that commanding tone in what's already a deep and sensual voice, you think for a half-panicked instant that you just might, "the first time's the most nerve-wracking."

"What, got a lot of practice deflowering people?" you ask, and there's a dangerous edge to Ardyn's smile that makes you feel entirely hunted, but in a much _friendlier_ way than he's hunted you before. You wipe your hand a little on the towel before moving yourself back over him.

"I'll never tell," he taunts you back, and then sucks in a breath as you slide your hand between his legs. It's wet, not just with oil, and warm, and you slide your hand further back before trying to adjust the angle. You can't help thinking about doing it another way, but if Ardyn wants you up his ass, you're not going to complain, especially when he's so enthusiastic about it.

As you line up, you say, "If you want me to touch you anywhere else, just let me know, alright?"

"Sweet a sentiment as ever, Noctis," Ardyn replies, wiping his own hand before dragging it over your hip, digging his nails in just enough to make you twitch. "But don't fret, I know what I'm doing."

You nod, and slide in, slowly - it's tight, and Ardyn jerks his hips under you before arching into it, his hand on your hip trying to pull you deeper. It's tight, and warm, and you have to stop and groan before you're even all the way in because it's just that _good_. The sensation alone wouldn't be enough to replicate it, either, because it's like the world has shifted, just a little. Because this is Ardyn, whose fate was always tangled up with yours, whose magic hums right up _against_ yours in a way that no one else could replicate.

Ardyn, who is wearing that devil's smile of his again as he leans up and whispers in your ear, "Surely you can go harder than that."

Well. If that's what he wants. You pull back just a little and then snap your hips forward, which earns you a pleased noise that is halfway to a cry, and from there you just don't _stop_. You've never had an extreme amount of stamina and you can already feel the crescendo building, and then there's Ardyn - never silent, never _still_ , flexing around you, moving with you, digging his nails into the upper part of your back.

It's a challenge between you, or so it feels like. Ardyn kisses you again, but it feels like it barely lasts before you have to pull back with a groan in order to _breathe_ as you go over. It's a white-hot rush, the exact moment of warping spread out into infinity and then you crash back into yourself, back into him, shuddering into the long thin arms around you before you go limp.

Ardyn squeezes around you again as you pull out, and he's still breathing hard and rolling his hips into yours in search of release. Carefully, you slide a hand down between the two of you. "Let me help," you say, but you wait for his nod against your shoulder before you touch.

It's hot and wet, which you expected, and you really _don't_ know what you're doing. But as you rub your fingers along, Ardyn gasps directions in your ear, "Higher... _There_ ," and grinds himself into your hand. You keep the pressure up right there, rubbing and fondling the little hard spot you find, and then very suddenly and with a loud groan, Ardyn shudders against you and goes finally, _finally_ still.

It only lasts for a moment, though, before he reaches up to cup your face and kiss you again. The two of you roll apart, just a little, and you wipe your hand on the towel as you go. But you don't entirely distangle, and instead wind up side by side, you on your side facing him and Ardyn halfway propped on his own arm. The both of you have a sheen of sweat in the dull lamplight that you know is going to make you cold very shortly.

"Marvelous," Ardyn mutters, before closing his eyes and wiggling up against your chest.

"You're kind of big for the little spoon," you mutter, but it's good natured and Ardyn chuckles at it before scooting up to rest his head actually on the pillows.

"Nothing but complaints, your generation," he teases back. "Was it _that_ terrible for you?"

Too lazy to get under the blankets that are beneath you, you just banish the soiled towel before calling up your own set of bedding, old, thick sleeping bags that have seen more than their share of the world, just like the two of you. You lean in again and kiss the side of his jaw, warmly, sweetly. 

"Best terrible thing that ever happened to me."


End file.
